The Centre for Modernist Studies is a research network that supports conversations, conferences, talks, readings, exhibitions and other activities relating to the diverse practices and movements that have been associated with the term ‘modernism’. The Centre’s understanding of modernism (or ‘modernisms’) is capacious and interdisciplinary, and we welcome creative and critical explorations of modernist cultural politics in the early twentieth century and the present day. 

This last year, the Centre has been busy with various research events and activities. 2022 marked 100 years since the publication of Peruvian poet César Vallejo’s Trilce (1922) and, in a masterclass organised by Sara Crangle, Professor Will Rowe led us in a fascinating discussion of this extraordinary collection of poems. PhD student Chrissie Dobson has led the revival of the CMS Postgraduate Reading Group, which began with a discussion of Ulysses and has gone on to explore more diverse iterations of modernism throughout the year.  

Modernist Archives Workshop and Screening with Kabe Wilson  

In early 2023, we announced our first ever CMS Artist in Residence, Kabe Wilson and in May, we held a day-long event to mark the culmination of the residency. The day included a ‘Modernist Archives’ workshop featuring short ‘Show and Tell’ presentations about various modernist archives held at the Keep. Archival materials examined included Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas scrapbooks, Doris Lessing’s letters, Virginia Woolf’s letters and diaries, material from the Rosey Pool collection (Pool was a cultural anthropologist who corresponded with black writers including Langston Hughes), documents from the Jeremy Hutchinson archive (Hutchinson was a lawyer who defended the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover), poems and drawings from Anna Mendelssohn’s papers, the artworks of Arnold Daghani, and a photograph of Haile Selassie (Emperor of Ethiopia) on Brighton Pier in 1938. Speakers of the day included: Karen Watson, Helen Tyson, Pamela Thurschwell, Stephen Barkway, Joanna Pawlik, Chrissie Dobson, Hope Wolf and Kabe Wilson. Participants joined from near and far, including PhD students, academics, writers and artists. In the afternoon, Kabe Wilson launched his film Looking for Virginia: An Artist’s Journey Through 100 Archives. The culmination of his residency at the Centre for Modernist Studies, this multi-media presentation centres around the story of the ten paintings of Brighton and Sussex he produced during the 2020 lockdown period, and the exciting art history discovery that led to one of them becoming the cover image of a new edition of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. By guiding us through a century of archives, in more than one sense, Kabe’s film challenges our understandings of archival work, showing that every life is a mystery marked by constant overlaps between people, times and places, and how memory and archive can combine to offer vital clues to the past that prove that we are all ultimately and powerfully connected. You can view Kabe's film online. 

Working with Kabe Wilson has been both an inspiration and a delight, and we look forward to continuing and expanding the Artist in Residence scheme in future years.  

Huge thanks to everyone who has taken part in and helped to organise CMS events this year. Next year, PhD students Chrissie Dobson, Livvy Sutherland and others are planning a conference titled ‘Coronavirus, Modernity, Crises: “Covid-19 Definitely did Take Place”’. Helen Tyson will also be developing plans for the International Virginia Woolf Conference, to be co-hosted at Sussex and Kings College London in July 2025 on the topic of ‘Virginia Woolf and Dissidence.’ If you’d like to be involved in these events or any other aspect of the CMS, please do get in touch!  

Helen Tyson (H.Tyson@sussex.ac.uk) and Hope Wolf (H.Wolf@sussex.ac.uk), Co-Directors Centre for Modernist Studies